The PC had got slow again so it was time to format and re-install. What a difference. Applications now start quickly, disk usage dramatically reduced – feels like a fresh machine. It’s a pity Windows requires this type of start again approach and something that hopefully Vista will resolve. For the mac users out there – as time goes on does the mac O/S start to slow down? Anyway – new (old) desktop to celebrate.

Trying to keep to ‘core’ apps only so no Yahoo Widgets, no Objectdock, only MSN Messenger installed etc etc. Highly recommend XP users to format the disk (once you’ve backed up key data) and start again. Go on – you know you want to.

I was the same – spent a good chunk of the weekend but it was well worth it. I did have a lot of ‘core’ but I’m trying to keep it down to a bare minimum.

It’s a new approach for me and will last five minutes knowing me but it’s worth a try. The other new rule…no games on the PC anymore. Should mean upgrading to new spec (whenever that is) will be slightly cheaper than my previous spends.

Clearly I’m not an expert. I’ve only had my Mac a few weeks, though surprisingly I’m as at home, if not more so, on the Mac now. I miss it when I’m working and thus have to use my Thinkpad. Never thought I’d say that. I’ve become a Mac Whore.

Anyway, from my limited research on the matter, OSX, like Unix, doesn’t seem to get particularly fragmented. There are a few defrag tools out there, but none seem to do much more than degrade the system performance. OSX runs scripts on a daily basis which amongst other things, clean out the cache, remove log files, and so on. In terms of defragging, it’s apparently unusual for OSX to get badly fragmented in the first place. When it writes changes to a file, instead of splitting a file into fragments and scattering it around unused space on the HDD as it grows in size, it apparently would rather move the entire file to a new location and delete the old file, so that it can avoid fragmentation.

I have no idea just how true this is. I’m still a relative Mac Virgin. I can’t even compare my Macs performance against the PC as I have 3 times the ram in my Mac as well as 2 cpus, so naturally everything will feel quick.

I guess the major culprit for a PC slowing down, besides fragmentation, is the build up of spy ware, some of which might be missed by ad-aware and similar products. In that respect, the Mac is great. Nobody targets the Mac with Viruses or Spy ware. The security built into the OS would seem to be enough to block such attempts anyway. I can surf away without fear of a thousand pop-ups and some dodgy app mining my hdd. Of course, if the Mac was as popular the PC, then I’m sure there’d be just as many people looking for loopholes in OSX as there are in Windows. In some ways it’s a blessing for Apple that they’re almost an also-ran.

When I sold my PC to Roy, I simply uninstalled almost all the apps, leaving a few very basic ones. Then created a new user login, and removed the old logins. That actually made the PC feel a lot faster without needing to format and reinstall everything. Boot up times were reduced, and everything felt more responsive. Just a thought.

That’s a slightly unfair comparison. The Intel processors are better at some things, similar at other things, and worse at some things, in comparison to the IBM cpu. In the same way that intel and AMD are.

In terms of price, a new Dual Core 2.0 with a 20″ Cinema display costs about the same as a MacBookPro. Not $6k. Hehe. Creative licensing, I think so.

From everything I’ve seen, when both running natively, on average, the Intel and G5 are about the same. Which you’d expect. The G5 would have the edge if Apple had ever bothered to make use of it’s 64bit architecture. But they didn’t. It bodes well for the new Intel PowerMacs (MacPros?) in the future which will have double the clockspeed of the current ones.

As for developing Java on a laptop. Perfectly feasible. I’ve been doing it for years on a single cpu 1.6ghz Thinkpad. Compiling is always quick. It’s memory I miss.

Nah. Current new price, with a display, is about the same as the laptop, assuming you buy your ram elswhere, as Apple rip you off on the ram. $3.5k all in if you buy it all from Apple. But yeah, for the most part that “little laptop” is about as powerful as the current entry level PowerMac, which is pretty cool. Same goes for the 20″ iMac which is almost half the price of both. In hindsight, the 20″ iMac might have been the better long term choice for me. Perhaps.

I’m sure you’ll cave in on a Mac one way or another, even if it’s just a mini. 🙂